Josie Lynn - Nine Months Old

Josie Lynn is nine months old now!! & would you believe that she wouldn't sit still for her regular monthly photo?! :)

Josie Lynn - Nine Months - October 14, 2016

This girl is really on the move! Her primary mode of transportation is the army crawl & she has really gotten fast that way, but she is also doing some crawling on her knees now. I wonder if she will ever change to fully crawling on her knees? :) As well as being on the move, Josie also moves from laying down/crawling to the sitting position now.  She has also started to pull up on things. She loves standing behind a walker toy, but she doesn't understand how she needs to move her feet to walk with it yet. Sometimes when I try to hold Josie's hands to walk, she just picks her legs up all together. LOL

I absolutely adore Josephine's little grin! Once she started teething with her first tooth, she started making the funniest smiling face. You can just feel her joy! Josie also has such a sweet little giggle. She loves to laugh at her big brother & sister. Sometimes she even giggles at Mom & Dad. :)

Speaking of teeth...Josephine now has three! She has both bottom middle teeth & one on the top right side. Her little toothy grin is adorable!

Josephine is doing some more talking. She is mostly saying "dadadada" & "mamama" on repeat, but recently she has also tried saying "bye-bye", "bubba", "sissy", & "pop pop". She is beginning to really connect names to people. I love hearing her say mama now b/c I know she is thinking of me. :) But usually when she's happy, she does a lot of dada's & the mama's come out big time when she is sleepy.

Josie is a big eater...at least when it come to puffs & purees! She eats three good meals a day now & she has developed a great pincer grasp eating puffs. We have started introducing more "real" food lately. It's funny to watch her with the textures. She is a very expressive eater. She does well chewing & swallowing, but the textures are holding her back a little bit. We are just continuing to give her small pieces of what we eat for her to try, while also feeding her purees so she isn't hungry.

We are still doing well with nursing. Every time I think about our start on the breastfeeding journey, I can't believe how far we've come. I honestly thought in the first month that Josie & I wouldn't be able to do it. I'm so thankful that we worked through it, as difficult as it was! Now she nurses about every three hours. She still expects to nurse to sleep most of the time & also a little when she wakes up. But now that she is eating food too, she can spend some time with Paul & I can step away for short periods of time. It's nice to be able to do that. Paul has even been able to put her to sleep some. Although, I'm not ready to fully give that up! :)

We have been through a continuous battle when it comes to nighttime sleep. Josie does pretty well for a little bit & then starts waking every couple of hours for a while. I guess it's teething, sickness, who knows?! But I'm ready for her to wake up only once at night, or even none at all! I need some sleep! The good news is that Paul helps at night if she wakes up too much.

Naps are pretty random with Josephine. I guess most often, she takes a long nap in the morning - sometimes even two hours. But then she still needs a bit of a nap in the afternoon. That gets tricky though, b/c we still want her to go to bed at a decent time. She is still a little young to go down to one nap, but she is clearly down to two for now. Another tricky issue with naps is that I often have to wake her up to pick up big brother or big sister at school. It's tough being the third child!

One of my favorite things lately is that Josie is starting to dance to music. She sits on her bottom & just shakes her little head while bouncing. I need to get it on video. Can't wait until she is standing up & shaking her little booty!